


Narcissus

by Ymir14



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dystopia, M/M, Science Fiction, Teaching a Human to Robot, Teaching a Robot to Love, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 02:17:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6781390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ymir14/pseuds/Ymir14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Breathe in, breathe out. 2 years left. The air is cold on his tongue, so he closes his mouth.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The greenhouse tender and the artist. A robot's crash course to becoming human. A human's crash collision with understanding a robot. The divide between them, and it's exploration.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Narcissus

A pot falls, smashes, and afterwards silence continues, as surely as time does. The dirt settles, he cleans it up.

Nobody knows why they’re doing anything; they just do it, then spend their lives searching for justification. A waste of time. Time runs out. It's like how the leaves of a plant follow their artificial sun, they’re just looking to shed light on the actions they've already performed.

He's sure of this.

Humans are foolish in this pursuit. Pointlessly using all those those seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, increments to try and trace what isn’t there. They were nothing more than wilting flowers, drying out before they fall. Plants growing to follow an artificial sun. His mind provides ‘make-believe’, ‘imaginary’, ‘fraudulent.’ Nyla ignores it.

The seedling needed to be re-potted anyways, but the ceramic pot shattering was inconvenient, the root system probably suffered some trauma and he had no intention to begin wearing shoes in this room that he’s maybe spent too many years in.

Nyla could definitely nurture it back to health. All his life, tending, propagating plants in some greenhouse, then some house, then this apartment. This was what he was made to do, manufactured to perform these core tasks. 14 years. Custom. Being left behind, alone. This was easier. This was simple. This is all he was meant for.

If only that stayed consistent. The world grew out of him before he ran out of time, a cultural weed waging war against time before the frost came. 2 years.

Nyla is notified of a new software patch from the collective, trying to keep their intelligences on par with their replacements, far from here. The download is fast, instantaneous, quick to occur. The boot is even faster.

 

       C:\Mother\>setx path “%path%”; c:\Interface\XHW300 SelfPatch 74.exe\

       SUCCESS: Specified value was saved

       C:\Interface>

       C:\Interface>XHW300 SelfPatch 74.exe\

 

His head lolls forwards as it begins to prepare to alter and delete and add, and he’s breathing through the jitters and he knows he needs to reboot, soon. It’s been 4 days. 12 years past around this slowly dying sun. (Quickly dying sun.) A matter of scale, on the level of worlds. The Sol system wasn't valuable to maintain anymore, only the notion of sentiment keeping it guarded. Earth wasn't somewhere to make a living, have a life.

And despite the fact he only had 14 years to live, even if it's all during what humans considered to be their ‘prime,’ there still always appeared to be another day peeking over the horizon, even if his internal clock denied this. It did frequently. (Constantly? Continually? Fucking word suggestions.)

That timer in his body, counting down, didn't quite process anything taking place. He sometimes wishes he didn't set it up, but the fact remains it's there. Time was consistent, irrelevant, another value. Or, it shouldn't notice. It does. Nyla’s always been able to feel time slipping through his fingers. Like daylight filtering through the window, crushing with its weight.

2 years left. Nyla is sure of that.

He supposed it's good to be sure of something when the winds come, like the tides of dust and dusk ebb over everything he can see out the window or hear echo down the hall. His brain records it perfectly, down to the last detail if he tries to access any earlier thought. It's just like it was yesterday, the dictionary program states. There was no today or yesterday in data, no short or long term memory.

5 years later, and he wonders what's outside. Pointless.

He almost wants to see out his window, instead of seeing the remnants of sunlight trickle through vegetation and cracks of another world. The smell of fertilizer and dirt and moss is thick in the air, and caked into his clothes; the wind from outside would blow it all away. Maybe it would be worth it. The light dappled on floor in what was once his room was sufficient. Outside was unknown.

Not that he doesn't know, but the outside hardly changes, but it changes all the same. Nothing was different. Seven days since he last checked, and an uncountable number of ticks since the beginning. It’s the same, and so is he. Like no time ever elapsed. He once and still has a face with a pointy nose, and he still had the body he was put into, and he could still feel the pseudo-nerve network, responding when data was requested or with sensory stigma and he knows his brain may cache new information, while he himself upgraded,  

He was still here, too. His given name was still Nyla, gynoid model #GHW-300, serial number 1046502. His basic functions didn’t degrade. Still sitting like a doll, long curled hair cascading over his thin shoulders, like the years hadn’t passed by him at all. Like they’d fallen through his fingers, and those vines grew to take their place as this shoddy apartment complex got only more and more covered in tendrils and dirt and leaves and rubble and roots. He opens the window.

Time buries all. Or, if only it could.

Breathe in, breathe out. 2 years left. The air is cold on his tongue, so he closes his mouth.

Some sensory perception mingling with some dictionary program inside him which tells him the light breeze is creating a ‘refreshing,’ or maybe ‘hollow’ feeling in his chest. Nyla’d rather say it was cold. It felt less fake. All the words are authentic, but to dress up the term seemed unnecessary. He couldn’t feel anything in his chest anyways, apart from a partially automated heart, organ systems, or sensations on top of it. He’d be concerned if he could.

All a waste of time to ponder, even if it's a task managed in microseconds. Ticks.

He lets his eyes fall closed, feels the tips of his eyelashes on the tops of his cheekbones, walks over to the place on the floor, covered with what was once a towel. It hardly held itself together now, but at least could function as a floor covering. Nyla sits down, then lies down. Breathes in, breathes out with his eyes still closed; what a fragile body. He lets his conscious programming take a soft reset, to power down, to boot whatever this update held (that is, hopefully less thesaurus software.)

By the time his server activated once more, Nyla felt the chill in the air nipping at his toes.

**Author's Note:**

> "Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.” - Mitch Albom, _The Time Keeper_


End file.
